The Amorous Passion, or Love Between The Sexes

The love between the man and woman, most deserves our attention of all the compound passions arising from a mixture of love and hatred with other affections, because of:

• its force and violence
• those curious principles of philosophy behind it.

In its most natural state, this love is derived from the conjunction of three different impressions or passions:

• the pleasing sensation arising from beauty
• the bodily appetite for generation
• a generous kindness or goodwill.

The origin of kindness from beauty is explained from the foregoing reasoning.

The question is how the bodily appetite is excited by it.

The appetite of generation, when confined to a certain degree: ◦ is of the pleasant kind ◦ has a strong connection with all the agreeable emotions.

The following all encourage this desire:

• Joy, mirth, vanity, and kindness
• music, dancing, wine, and good cheer.

On the other hand, sorrow, melancholy, poverty, humility destroy it.

From this quality, it is easily conceived why it should be connected with the sense of beauty.

But there is another principle that contributes to the same effect.

The parallel direction of the desires is:

• a real relation
• produces a connection among them, no less than a resemblance in their sensation.

To fully comprehend the extent of this relation, we must consider that any principal desire may be attended with subordinate ones connected with it.

If other subordinate desires are parallel, they are related to the principal one by that means.

Thus, hunger may often be considered as the soul’s primary inclination.

• The desire of approaching the meat is the secondary one.
• Since it is absolutely necessary to satisfy that appetite.

Therefore, if an object inclines us to approach the meat, it naturally increases our appetite.

On the contrary, whatever inclines us to set our victuals at a distance:

• is contradictory to hunger
• reduces our inclination to them.

Beauty has the first effect, and deformity the second effect.

This is why:

• beauty gives us a keener appetite for our victuals
• deformity is sufficient to disgust us at the most savoury dish.

All this is easily applicable to the appetite for generation.

From these two relations (resemblance and a parallel desire), a connection arises between:

1. The sense of beauty
2. The bodily appetite
3. Benevolence

These 3 become inseparable.

It is indifferent which of them advances first. ◦ Since any of them is almost sure to be attended with the related affections. • A man inflamed with lust, at least feels a momentary kindness towards its object or woman. ◦ At the same time, he fancies her more beautiful than ordinary.

There are as many who begin with kindness and esteem for the person’s wit and merit, and advance from that to the other passions.

But the most common species of love is that which:

• first arises from beauty
• afterwards diffuses itself into:
  • kindness
  • the bodily appetite.

Kindness or esteem, and the appetite to generation, are too remote to unite easily together.

• Kindness is perhaps the most refined passion of the soul.
• The appetite for generation is the most gross and vulgar.

The love of beauty:

• is placed in a just medium between them
• shares both their natures

From there, it is so singularly fitted to produce both.

This account of love is not peculiar to my system.

• But it is unavoidable on any hypothesis.

Its 3 affections are distinct.

• Each of them has its distinct object.

Therefore, they produce each other only by their relation.

• But the relation of passions alone is insufficient.
• There should also be a relation of ideas.

The beauty of one person never inspires us with love for another.

• This is a sensible proof of the double relation of impressions and ideas.

From this single evident instance, we may form a judgment of the rest.

This also illustrates the origin of pride and humility, love and hatred.

The self is the object of pride and humility.

• Some other person is the object of love and hatred.
• Yet these objects alone cannot be the causes of those passions.

Since each of them has a relation to two contrary affections which must destroy each other at the very first moment.

The mind has certain organs naturally fitted to produce a passion which naturally turns the view to a certain object.

• But this is insufficient to produce the passion.

Another emotion is required to:

• set these principles in action
• bestow on them their first impulse, through a double relation of impressions and ideas.

This situation is still more remarkable with regard to the appetite of generation.

Sex is the object and the cause of the appetite.

We turn our view to it when actuated by that appetite.

Reflecting on it suffices to excite the appetite.

But this cause loses its force by too great frequency.

• It needs to be quickened by some new impulse.
• We find that impulse to arise from the person’s beauty, that is, from a double relation of impressions and ideas.

This double relation is necessary where an affection has a distinct cause and object.

How much more so is it necessary when it only has a distinct object, without any determinate cause?